Consequences For Categorization

Brain and Cognition 60 (2006) 139–145 www.elsevier.com/locate/b&c

Crowded and sparse domains in object recognition: Consequences for categorization and naming
Tim M. Gale a,b,c,¤, Keith R. Laws c, Kerry Foley a
a b

Department of Psychiatry, QEII Hospital, Welwyn Garden City, UK School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, HatWeld, UK c School of Psychology, University ofHertfordshire, HatWeld, UK Accepted 24 October 2005 Available online 22 December 2005

Abstract Some models of object recognition propose that items from structurally crowded categories (e.g., living things) permit faster access to superordinate semantic information than structurally dissimilar categories (e.g., nonliving things), but slower access to individual object information when namingitems. We present four experiments that utilize the same matched stimuli: two examine superordinate categorization and two examine picture naming. Experiments 1 and 2 required participants to sort pictures into their appropriate superordinate categories and both revealed faster categorization for living than nonliving things. Nonetheless, the living thing superiority disappeared when the atypicalcategories of body parts and musical instruments were excluded. Experiment 3 examined naming latency and found no diVerence between living and nonliving things. This Wnding was replicated in Experiment 4 where the same items were presented in diVerent formats (e.g., color and line-drawn versions). Taken as a whole, these experiments show that the ease with which people categorize items maps stronglyonto the ease with which they name them. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Category-speciWc; Visual crowding; Perceptual diVerentiation; Picture naming; Picture categorization

1. Introduction Understanding and interpreting category-speciWc impairments in patients relies upon knowing how a neurologically intact population performs on the same kinds of task; and this has,until relatively recently, been neglected in most accounts of category speciWcity (see Laws, 2005; Laws, Gale, Leeson, & Crawford, 2005). Given the greater frequency of living thing impairments reported to date it has often been assumed that normal controls should be less accurate and slower to name items from living thing categories. Indeed, some studies have described this pattern and theexplanation given is that living things share greater intra-category structural similarity relative to nonliving things (GaVan & Heywood,

*

Corresponding author. Fax: +44 0 1707 365169. E-mail address: t.gale@herts.ac.uk (T.M. Gale).

1993; Humphreys, Riddoch, & Quinlan, 1988; Lloyd-Jones & Humphreys, 1997a, 1997b). Some models of object recognition assume that competition between structuraldescriptions gives rise to processing advantages for certain classes of stimuli (Gerlach, 2001; Humphreys & Forde, 2001; Humphreys et al., 1988; Tranel, Logan, Frank, & Damasio, 1997). Furthermore, models such as the Cascade (Humphreys et al., 1988) and Hierarchical Interactive Theory (HIT: Humphreys & Forde, 2001) propose that the direction of category advantage depends upon the level of processingrequired by a task. For example, if a target item shares a similar structural description to several within-category associates, it will take longer to resolve a speciWc ‘structural’ representation than if the target item is structurally distinctive. This will aVect the activation of item-speciWc semantic and phonological representations such that a signiWcant delay in object naming should bemeasurable. But, by contrast, greater competition for some categories (e.g., living things) at the level of

0278-2626/$ - see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2005.10.003

140

T.M. Gale et al. / Brain and Cognition 60 (2006) 139–145

structural representation should produce a processing advantage on tasks where exactly the same stimuli require...